


That's Amore

by GoldenThreads



Category: New Mutants, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Blind Date, Footsie, Mistaken Identity, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1588646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Berto sets Doug up on a blind date, much to his horror. Luckily it doesn't go quite as expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's Amore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shokushu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shokushu/gifts).



Warmly lit and bustling with two dozen customers, the pizza place was certainly…quaint. If it weren’t for his impending doom, Doug would have given the restaurant a more generous evaluation, but the background chatter gnawed at him like nails on a chalkboard, the insufferable waiters kept circling back to ask if he was ready to order, and his phone refused to buzz with a timely rescue. Doug slumped back in his seat, letting his leg jitter nervously under the table as he stared straight at the front door — his only escape.

He should have known better than to make a bet with Roberto, no matter how high the odds were in his favor. If Doug had won, he’d have been content with merely gloating, but a victorious Roberto always demanded payment of the very worst kind.

A blind date.

Again.

Soon after the team moved out to San Francisco, Roberto made it his personal mission in life to bring Doug up to speed on certain…checkpoints of adulthood. Checkpoints involving women. And kissing. And beds. It was the least he could do. No teammate left behind, not on his watch.

Doug’s protests of disinterest didn’t stop Roberto’s quest, and his palpable apathy only made Roberto more committed to the noble cause. When Doug didn’t make use of the phone numbers Roberto so kindly collected, he resorted to arranging the dates on his own. If he didn’t give Doug the numbers, then Doug couldn’t call and _cancel_ _,_ leaving him no choice but to show up and explain in person that his friend was a Grade-A Jerk.

So here Doug was, waiting in social agony yet again. Every time the bell chimed on the restaurant’s front door, Doug braced himself for his mystery date to walk in. It wasn’t the brunette with the wavy hair and the nifty glasses, or the petite redhead with the pixie cut. Thank goodness. _That_ little idea of Roberto’s had only succeeded in being downright creepy.

Another few customers arrived, and still no dice. Doug checked his watch, then his phone for good measure. Five minutes until the designated date time. Maybe if he could stop being so punctual he could spare himself the worry. He’d already rehearsed his apology at least a dozen times, there wasn’t much more he could do.

The bell chimed for some guy in a frumpy coat. Doug relaxed and glanced down at his phone once more, working on a truly scathing text to Roberto. He wasn’t the best at threats, but swearing he’d buy pizza for the whole city and put it on Roberto’s card ought to be menacing enough.

“Doug Ramsey?”

Frumpy coat dude stood there with a warm smile and an outstretched hand.

On instinct, Doug reached out to return the handshake. The rest of him didn’t catch up nearly as fast. His mouth hung uselessly ajar as his eyes darted over the stranger, cataloging the tousled dark hair, the soft cheekbones, the exact curve of his neck, and the coat that wasn’t frumpy at all, but tailored with impeccable precision and worn down by years of use.

“Alexander,” the man supplied in answer to the silence. He gently pulled his hand away from Doug’s awkward, limp-wristed handshake, and sat down across from him in the booth. “Pleased to meet you.”

_Oh God_ _,_ Doug thought to himself in utter despair, _Roberto broadened the candidate pool._

A few years older and a head taller, Alexander was utterly out of his league — if he even _had_ a league, which he didn’t, because he was here to explain it was all a misunderstanding, not sit and gawk and analyze that faint accent behind the man’s words that even Doug couldn’t place, and certainly not to let his heart pound so loudly in his ears, and — it would be doubly cruel, this time, to say it was only a friend’s nasty prank, and hadn’t Doug just spent the last half hour rehearsing something that he meant to—

“Ready to order?” asked the waitress, swooping in like a vulture and leaving the _finally_ unsaid.

Alexander leaned on one elbow, gazing intently at Doug, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with appreciation for what he found there. “Sure,” he told the waitress, eyes lingering a moment longer. “Medium size pizza, cheese on one half, and on the other…”

Doug had every intention of butting in right then and putting a stop to this, but a sudden touch to his ankle chased all the words out of his head. He stared wide-eyed as a tiny smirk curled on Alexander’s lips.

A moment later the foot returned, tracing leisurely upwards along the curve of Doug’s calf. It rested against the inside of his knee for a moment, the conversation with the waitress a nice distraction, then drifted back down, brushing here and there as if trying to soothe the frantic tension from Doug. When it reached his ankle once more, it nudged at the thin line of bare skin between pant leg and sock and curled possessively far _—_ _inhumanly_ far.

Doug slammed a hand on the table, startling himself and the waitress alike. “Alexander” didn’t flinch. He finished up their order with a charming smile that promised a bountiful tip, then turned back to Doug once the waitress had scurried away. He grinned.

“I can’t _believe_ I fell for that,” Doug hissed, laughter bubbling up in his chest. He gave Warlock a playful kick under the table, and soon found his foot captured between Warlock’s ankles. Every time he tried to tug it away, Warlock swung his legs forward and back, refusing to let him go. “Did Berto put you up to it?”

“Hmm? No, he doesn’t know.” Warlock didn’t lapse back into his usual scripts, and Doug finally isolated that hint of an accent. It was the irregular cadence of Warlock’s words that had thrown him, not the words themselves.

“So you came up with this prank on your own?”

Warlock finally let go of Doug’s foot. He fidgeted with an uncertainty that looked completely out of place on his humanform, worrying over his words. “It makes you uncomfortable…?”

Doug shook his head. “That’s not what I said.” He tapped his shoe against Warlock’s under the table, and had to stretch farther and farther each time as Warlock pulled his legs out of reach. The alien’s legs were always freakishly long, but now Doug could scarcely find them. Was he shifting away? _“_ _Hey.”_

“Not a prank,” Warlock mumbled, twirling a finger through his own curls.

The waitress arrived with their pizza, half cheese and half heavy sausage. Warlock kept the cheese slices for himself and transferred the rest onto a plate for Doug. They ate in companionable silence, feet still knocking against each other under the table in an absentminded game of tag.

“Wait,” Doug blurted around a half-finished mouthful. He gulped down the rest and wiped at his mouth with a napkin. “If Berto didn’t know, then how—”

The slice of pizza wasn’t nearly big enough for Warlock to hide behind, but he tried it just the same. “Um, err, he…broadened his search to dating sites…so I…”

“ _Show me_ _,_ ” Doug croaked, overwhelmed by an incredulous mix of horror and delight. He didn’t know which was stranger, the idea of Warlock creating a profile on a dating website, or of Roberto actively trawling them for potential dates.

It took a few minutes of begging before Warlock rolled his eyes and gave in. Doug’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he scrambled to follow the link Warlock had sent.

Alexander Robinson, 27, speculative fiction writer.

Likes: Conlang, D&D.

On one hand, Doug was mildly offended that this was all it took for Roberto to settle on a perfect match. On the other, he could barely _breathe_ from laughing so hard. Every feebly seductive selfie in Alexander’s gallery brought him to a new height of amusement. There were even convention photos of Alexander fawning over famous celebrities, embarrassingly endearing, and Doug himself couldn’t tell if they were seamlessly photoshopped or monstrous abuses of Warlock’s shapeshifting abilities.

When he looked back up, Warlock was watching him nervously. A faint blush had spread over his humanform’s cheeks, an unconscious little shift that made Doug grin even wider.

“Partner, I think this is the best thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Warlock gave a noncommittal hum and returned to his third slice of pizza. He ate slowly, matching a sense-memory to every bite and pretending it was the best he ever had. “You weren’t the only one interested,” he added in a low voice. “You should’ve seen the messages I got from strangers.”

“ _Oh my God._ ” Doug fumbled for his phone once more, but Warlock snatched it out of his hands and replaced it with an untouched piece of pizza.

“Maybe later,” he promised in a voice that said Doug would have to work very, very hard to earn the privilege.

Still boggling over what the the heck those strangers had said to Warlock, and maybe the tiniest bit distracted by a sudden swell of possessiveness, Doug returned to his meal. He couldn’t finish the last slice, so he picked off all the offending chunks of meat and passed it over to Warlock, same as always. Many a pizza had disappeared between them over the past year.

Warlock licked the sauce from his fingers, a human gesture he so rarely got the opportunity to indulge in. “So, only dinner?” he asked, eyes twinkling, “Or dinner and a movie?”

“Got something in mind?”

“The dollar theater’s playing Pacific Rim tonight.”

Doug grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”

They paid their bill, tipped the waitress, and headed outside into the dusk. The theater was a half hour’s walk away, and they strolled along side by side, observing the world around them with equal wonder.

Warlock’s humanform caught the light so strangely whenever they passed in front of a bright storefront window, seeming to shift in the half-second between darkness and brilliance. He hadn’t calculated his shadows correctly, or was too lazy to care, lost in the image of a worn coat and a dear friend aside him.

“You don’t need to wear a humanform, you know,” Doug told him softly.

“Self knows.” His fingers brushed against Doug’s, and after a moment’s hesitation he took his hand. “Sometimes it is fun to be handsome.”

“You’re always handsome to me.”

Warlock gave him a strange look, pupils glowing gold with the warmest light. “Flattery will not get you Self’s hookup requests.”

“Dang, there goes _that_ plan.”

Warlock beamed, and Doug squeezed his hand tight. His world really didn’t need anything more than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Warlock's humanform is based on Alexander Siddig, but with enough tweaks for it not to be _too_ evident. 
> 
> Also, halfway through this story I realized that if Berto was looking for the perfect dude he'd choose HIMSELF, but that is a story for someone else to write.


End file.
